Haven’t done this for a while and yesterday got me thinking. I was in touch with Tagra in Spain who are celebrating 75 years in business and three generations of the same family in the company. It got me thinking of the old days! How I used a BT-104 that looked like a Avanti Sigma IV but for me felt stronger and then my mind remembered the BT-101 that was like the Astroplane in style. Where I was from if you had a BT-101 then you were a god amongst breakers
It got me thinking about the Pan International “Top One” and the antennas from the old days that worked well and so I needed to add the throwback Thursday to an antenna that was well liked and well used by many across the EU and beyond.
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I had the Tagra 101 way back, gold anodized and worked amazing, super build quality, I wish they would make again, I did email them a few years ago and asked, but they replied and said discontinued. I’ve been using a copy for years, the build quality is not the best but the peformace and SWR are spot on,.
have not seen a astroplane in 25+ years..were were popular here down in new zealand..the ones we had were gold anodised there was also the astrostar a base end feed 5/8 wave also has the capacitance hat at the top also gold anodised ..i believe they were made by avanti but as never saw paper work or any magazine ads from period on them who knows
were called the astroplane the “dressmakers dummy” due to its shape
I recently got a NOS astroplane, works wonderfully, quality build, been sitting good in 70 to 90 mile an winds here recently. SWR way down low, I built exactly how the instruction’s said, love it!
Edited to say love it 👍
I use my NOS Astroplane that I got from Holland a couple of years ago. £25 delivered to my door. I don’t believe the Top One is built to anything like the same quality. The stuff in the box indicated it was made in 1978. A proper manual with it, with complete set up instructions and all the do’s and don’ts on using it. Everything about it is quality and it is less than 2KG.
Last March on 15m using 50W, I worked every South American country, California and Japan, just to name a few.